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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29716830">be the death of me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/master_plo/pseuds/master_plo'>master_plo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Author is still a little bit in love with Siri Tachi, Obi-Wan is sad and a little bit in love, Soulmates</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:28:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,733</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29716830</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/master_plo/pseuds/master_plo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The name on your skin can mean one of two things. It is either the name of your soulmate or the person who will kill you. As they leave Tatooine, Anakin’s name burns itself into Obi-Wan’s wrist and for thirteen years, he is foolish enough to think he knows what it means.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>143</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>be the death of me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>(I read like 1.5 soulmate AUs, it’s not even like it’s ~my thing~ idk why I keep writing them. Have this anyway.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He feels the first itching pressure on his wrist, the moment the boy takes his hand, and he does not think anything of it. His mind is full of the dark Jedi, of Qui-Gon almost losing a duel, and the touch on his wrist is barely there.</p>
<p>It burns itself into his skin, later, as their ship is breaking through the atmosphere and they are leaving Tatooine behind. Qui-Gon tells him that he does not know what it means, that he cannot know what it will mean, and it is only the bitterness in his heart that makes him say that the boy could be his death.</p>
<p>It could be that, or the boy could be his soulmate. He will not know, until the boy or something else kills him. All he wants to hear is that Qui-Gon would choose him over a boy he has just found. Qui-Gon puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him to be mindful of the moment.</p>
<p>He does not repeat the words, as Qui-Gon and him stand on a balcony of the temple, the city red behind them. But they are on his mind, a pressure that curls around his heart with a crushing grip. They are on his tongue, a poisonous weight.</p>
<p>He no longer believes that this boy can be his soulmate. His soulmate would not steal the closest thing he has to a father from him. Jealousy is not a feeling that becomes a Jedi, and he tries to stifle it, tries to hide it from Qui-Gon, tries to hide it even as he can feel something between them break that he thought unbreakable.</p>
<p>He still carries it in his heart, when they return to Naboo. He carries it in his heart, right until the moment a Zabrak Sith stabs his lightsaber through Qui-Gon’s heart, and death feels real. He looks at the boy, afterwards, as lost as him, and he no longer thinks that the boy will be the death of him.</p>
<p>He is not sure what he thinks of the only other meaning his name can have.</p>
<p>“You’ll be the death of me”, he says, two years later, half in exasperation, mostly in weary amusement, and only a little bit in anger. Words he has thought without meaning them a hundred times before.</p>
<p>“Sorry master”, Anakin says, but he knows the boy can see the smile crooking the corner of his mouth. It’s echoed on Anakin’s face.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan sighs, shaking his head. “Let’s get home.”</p>
<p>He knows the name on Anakin’s wrist, has known it almost as long as he has known him. The name was there already, when he first met him. It is not his. Once upon a time, he might have wondered what it meant – once upon a time he might have realised what it could also mean. If Qui-Gon had not died, maybe he would have lingered on the question longer.</p>
<p>As it is, he does not. There are too many explanations. Not all soulmates are evenly matched, and it does not seem to matter, that Anakin is his soulmate but he is not Anakin’s, as they tumble from danger to danger, as their connection in the force grows and he knows what Anakin will do even before the boy does. It does not matter, as the years slip by and he cannot imagine a life in which he is not training Anakin. Maybe it is only natural, to think that Anakin’s soulmate is somebody else. He seems made for something bigger. Obi-Wan is always chasing after him, cannot keep up with him, and knows he will still try, to his dying day. Try, just to protect him. He does not have to. Most of the time, it is Anakin protecting him.</p>
<p>One day, he will outgrow his training, and it makes sense, then, that there will be somebody else in his life. He still jokes, on the very worst days, on the missions that go so wrong he does not know how to explain them to the council, that Anakin will be the death of him, but he does not mean it. He does not believe it.</p>
<p>It takes Anakin until he is sixteen that he asks the question, but when he does, Obi-Wan has a feeling it has been on his mind for a while. “What if I will be?” They are on a ship back to Coruscant and he has only just finished patching up the blaster wound to Anakin’s arm. He should tend to his own wounds, but instead he sits down next to the boy.</p>
<p>Anakin is moving his fingers across the own name on his wrist, and he does not look at him. He looks like he is uncomfortable, cannot sit still, like he has done something wrong and is only waiting to be accused.</p>
<p>“You will not be the death of me”, he says, and he puts all the emphasis in the words that he can. He believes it – no, he knows it. To think that he ever thought anything else is laughable. He was jealous, afraid to lose Qui-Gon to this boy that was greater than life and he saw what he wanted to see. It was easier, then, to believe Anakin his doom than his future.</p>
<p>He did not know Anakin then – he wonders if Qui-Gon did. If he already saw this boy, seven years older, who tries so hard, even as his patience betrays him, as his attachments betray him. Who tries so hard to be what Obi-Wan wants him to be, and is better, at the same time. He breaks the rules and drives Obi-Wan to exasperation, but he does it for the best of reasons. He does it for the goodness in his heart. He will learn patience with time. He will learn to see a bigger picture.</p>
<p>“But then, why aren’t you my soulmate?” Anakin sounds much younger than he is, or maybe just younger than Obi-Wan was at his age. He moves his fingers across his wrist as if he wants to scratch the name out. He has not seen the Queen of Naboo in seven years.</p>
<p>He wants to tell Anakin what he thinks, wants to tell him of the great future ahead of him, a future much greater than Obi-Wan’s, but he is not sure the boy would understand. He is too attached. For all that he yells that he cannot wait for his training to be over, cannot wait until he does not have to listen to his lectures anymore, Anakin cannot bear to imagine, that their ways might one day part.</p>
<p>“Whatever the future holds for us, I know it is not my death at your hands.”</p>
<p>“Look”, he says, almost two years later, but weeks since they have last had this conversation. Anakin circles back to it, every now and then, his eyes full of fear.</p>
<p>“Don’t talk, master.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head, feels the room spin and grabs Anakin’s arm without meaning to. “You’re not the death of me”, he says, disregarding Anakin’s orders.</p>
<p>There is somebody else with him and it says much to his state that he cannot tell who it is. The force seems clouded around him, and oh, he is so tired. “You’re not the death of me, Anakin”, he says, not sure he has said it before.</p>
<p>“No, you seem quite capable of getting yourself killed on your own.” The voice is familiar, even through the fogginess in his mind and the numb echo of pain, but it still takes him a moment to recognise it.</p>
<p>“Siri”, his voice seems to scrape his throat open.</p>
<p>She curses something under her breath, and he wants to smile, wants to ask her when she learnt words like that. She steps closer, and the warmth of her concern seems to wash over him. Maybe this isn’t good. Maybe he is worse than he thinks.</p>
<p>“What are you doing here?” He does not know why it confuses him – he only knows that she should not be here. He feels like he has not seen her in months.</p>
<p>“I called for help”, Anakin says, sounding sheepish.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan frowns. How long has Anakin been here? </p>
<p>“I was closest”, Siri tugs at the cold metal holding his hand, forces it open.</p>
<p>“No, Master Fisto was closest, Master Tachi just disregarded all laws of hyperspace traffic.” There is a note of warmth in Anakin’s voice, audible even through the tension.</p>
<p>Anakin and Siri. The force. It has been a long time since they have last been on a mission together, and it is not something he missed. They are too similar, too similar in all the ways he is not. Sometimes, he wonders if Siri became this reckless and defiant only because she realised that she could not irritate him with sticking to the rules anymore. It is him, these days, exasperated, telling both of them what the council would say. “The two of you will be the death of me”, he says, feels himself slipping away.</p>
<p>Somebody shushes him, and he cannot tell who it is. Their fear radiates around them, wraps itself around his mind like a warm blanket. “Say that when you not bleeding out on us.”</p>
<p>He nods, and it sounds like a good idea.</p>
<p>The words are on his lips, after Geonosis, and he wants to shout them, but they feel hollow even on his tongue. He feels like the opposite is true. Anakin will get himself killed, for the impatience that he has never learnt to control, or, much more likely, to save him. He cannot say either, as Anakin sleeps, what is left of his arm covered in bacta.</p>
<p>He is not sure why he is angry – and maybe it is not quite anger that he feels. It is a crueller feeling, less easily dismantled by mantras learnt in his childhood.</p>
<p>He did not teach Anakin enough, he did not teach him patience, he did not teach him not to value him over everything in the galaxy, over the lives of everyone he risked to save him, and it almost cost him his life.</p>
<p>In the back of his mind, he knows, he would have done the same. Maybe that’s why he’s so bad at teaching Anakin to let go.</p>
<p>Things change after Geonosis, and for a while, Obi-Wan is not sure why. The duel with Dooku changed Anakin – but he expected that. Anakin learnt something in that duel that ten years of lectures did not teach him. But it is more than that, he is not only more humble, less sure of his own abilities, he is drawing away from him.</p>
<p>He thinks he knows why when he sees Anakin’s finger linger on his wrist, retrace Padmé’s name, and he does not pry. He has not taught Anakin detachment in ten years, he will not do so now. Not when his own heart wants to hold on to every moment they still have. The council will make him a Jedi knight – and soon, too. They lost too many on Geonosis, and the war will need everyone of them. It will need them on different battlefields, it will need them to train the younglings old enough to become Padawans and the Padawans who lost their masters in the arena. He knows, he understands, but in his heart, he knows, he is not ready. How can he teach Anakin detachment when he has not learnt it himself? </p>
<p>“You could have died!” Anakin sounds almost angry – no, stop. Anakin is furious.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan sighs, testing the tenderness of his side with careful fingers. The bacta seems to have done its work. “Calm down Anakin.” He is glad to see Mace leave, now that he is no longer in imminent danger of death. The excuse that Anakin is no longer his student does not hold when he has not managed to teach him patience in all the years he was his student. “I’m quite fine.”</p>
<p>“You almost died!”</p>
<p>Frowning at the noise, and only mildly at the pain, Obi-Wan tries to sit up. “It was you or me, Anakin”, he sounds weary, even to his own ears. Maybe it is the injury, or maybe it is a conversation he does not want to have. And even as Anakin protests, it is not a conversation they should need to have. He is older, Anakin was his Padawan once, and he is the Chosen One. If he has to chose to live or let Anakin die, the decision is easy.</p>
<p>“Well, it shouldn’t have been”, Anakin says, and he sounds younger than he is, as if he could force his will on the galaxy, refuse the force the lives it wants to take.</p>
<p>Maybe he can. He got them both out alive, after all.</p>
<p>“Anakin”, he puts his hand on his shoulder, can feel him pull away, and know his voice echoes a thousand lectures. He does not mean for it to do. This is not a lecture, this is his heart laid bare, the truth, that he will always chose Anakin over himself.</p>
<p>Anakin looks at him like he understands and does not understand at the same time. Obi-Wan knows he does not and, suddenly, he is glad that Mace is gone for quite another reason. He would die for him, not because it would have been the right choice in the moment, not because of the prophecy hanging over Anakin’s future, not because Anakin will be so much more than he can ever hope to be, but simply because it is Anakin. Simply because he cannot bear to lose him. Cannot bear for the galaxy to lose this man.</p>
<p>Detachment. Of course, he had never been able to teach it to Anakin.</p>
<p>It’s weeks, months later, another battlefield, his muscles strained from a battle with no end, his skin scorched.</p>
<p>“We need to pull back”, Cody says, kneeling next to him. Over their heads, caught only by the cover of a rock, blasterbolts are lighting up the sky. The air seems alive with fire, with death.</p>
<p>Obi-Wan nods, his hand finds the name on his wrist, retraces it. He cannot feel it on his skin – he never could. The skin is as smooth as it was before he found Anakin’s name burned into it. He is retracing it from memory. He is at his calmest, when he thinks he can feel the name against his skin, the proof that Anakin is his soulmate.</p>
<p>It is almost enough to make him forget, that he wants more, that he knows his heart is clinging to him in a way that it should not. He presses his fingers against his name, breathes in the familiarity of his presence, even as he is halfway across the galaxy, fighting his own battle, and he lets it go. <br/>“Let’s turn this battle around, Cody”, he says, half a smile in his voice.</p>
<p>He was meant to be this and maybe he was meant to love him, too, but Anakin is meant for more. Anakin is meant to bring balance to the force, and that is all Obi-Wan can ask for. With the war raging around them, with Jedi and clones dying around them, it is the greatest gift he can ask for. It is hope, the only hope he carries in his heart on the worst days, when his men die around him and it feels like there is no end to death.</p>
<p>And so, when he feels the warmth in Anakin stretch out towards Senator Amidala every time their paths cross, he looks the other way. Anakin is doing so much for the galaxy. Let him have this, as he has this. This secret warmth in his heart.</p>
<p>It is enough. It has always been for him. To love without demand, to love without claim, without expectation. He has been a Jedi, always, first and foremost. </p>
<p>“And here I am, coming to the rescue again, Master”, Anakin says, deactivating his lightsaber. Ahsoka is behind him, smiling, her lightsabers light the room in flickering warmth. “What would you do without me?”</p>
<p>“What, I had it perfectly under control”, he says, even as Anakin opens the shackles around his wrists, but oh, it is so good to see him.</p>
<p>Anakin laughs under his breath. “Of course, you did.” He drops a lightsaber into his hand. “We thought we’d bring this, but maybe we should have left some work for you.”</p>
<p>“It is greatly appreciated”, he clips it to his belt, massaging his hands and the mischievous flicker in Anakin’s eyes warms something in his chest. “One gets so few moments to rest these days.” Obi-Wan returns his smile. It is a long time since he has thought of the alternative meaning the name on his wrist could have.</p>
<p>“Don’t make me fight Anakin”, he tells Yoda. He thinks he has dragged himself away from the recording of a monster with Anakin’s face. He can still see it in front of his eyes. It is playing on an endless loop in his mind.</p>
<p>He wants to fall. Fall with Anakin into the deep, into the darkest place of the force, to whatever place Anakin has sunk where he cannot feel the pain of his own downfall. Shaking his head, he tries to find the comforting calm of the force and catches himself retracing Anakin’s name on his wrist. He wants to scratch it out, burn it from his skin.</p>
<p>“What if we take on Palpatine together- surely, he killed Mace, Kit…” The emptiness inside his lungs cannot find the names. There are too many names. He is drowning in them. The fabric of the force is layered with loss. “Surely we stand a better chance going against Palpatine together.” They can take on Anakin afterwards. Or he can die in the attempt.</p>
<p>The silence already an answer, he turns to Yoda, and all that he can find in his eyes is grief.</p>
<p>Yoda knows. Knows the pain inside him, and he will still ask this of him. Will ask it because he has no choice. To move swiftly is their only chance.</p>
<p>He wants to say it again, even as he knows it useless. He cannot kill Anakin – will not kill Anakin. He knows Yoda will not sent him against Palpatine, will not allow him to come with him. He would die fighting Palpatine, because it is better than anything that will follow after.</p>
<p>The words that Yoda has left him with, follow him to Mustafa, and yet, he does not believe them until he sees Anakin turn on the woman he loves. He cannot be gone. The worst thing of all is how familiar he still is. His voice, his face, even torn apart by anger, it is as familiar as his own face in the mirror.</p>
<p>He can see Anakin’s gaze flicker towards the name on his wrist as their blades cross, and neither of them give in. Anakin must have seen that name on his wrist a thousand times in the years since it burned itself into his skin, but this time, as his eyes move across the familiar lines, he snarls. As if it is a betrayal, that he still carries his name on his skin when he came here to kill him.</p>
<p>Here, they both stand with names they love on their wrists, while Padmé lies unconscious where Anakin left her, and he is dying, even as he is winning the duel.</p>
<p>“Looks like I was right, after all”, he tells Qui-Gon’s ghost, as he wipes sand from the table, wipes sand from his plate, wipes sand from his hands. There is a bitterness in the words that feels good.<br/>Qui-Gon says nothing, but he is there, at least. He looks like he is sorry.</p>
<p>“He was the death of me”, he adds, bitterness lacing his words, and he knows he is trying to lure a reaction from Qui-Gon. He isn’t sure he can lure an echo of his anger from a ghost. He looks at Qui-Gon nevertheless, holding his gaze in a silent challenge, but in the end, it is him who looks away first.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t the death of you”, Qui-Gon says, and he is not sure if his former master is saying what he thinks or if indulging his need to be angry, to feel anything but the emptiness inside himself, is a way to tell him he is sorry.</p>
<p>“Wasn’t he?” Obi-Wan can feel the anger pool out of him. He is tired, so tired. Tired of surviving, most of all. Of living with ghosts. Qui-Gon’s ghost is the only one that visits him, but he has so many. Almost everyone he has ever known is dead. The world is split in people he knows to be dead and people he fears to be dead. “I wouldn’t call this living.”</p>
<p>Qui-Gon’s silence tells him the answer. It was not what he meant, and they both know it. Anakin was not the death of him, because he was not. He is still alive, and Obi-Wan knows what it means. He is not ready to say it, although his heart has known it for a long time. Having been wrong in Anakin all these years, having thought him his soulmate when he was death in disguise, is easier than to think that his soulmate is capable of tearing the galaxy apart.</p>
<p>“He could still be the death of me”, he says, just to say something, but he can hear the ache in his voice, the tension caused by the tightness in his throat. He shakes his head, turning away. There is too much sand, too much heat on Tatooine for tears.</p>
<p>Qui-Gon is silent, once more, and Obi-Wan does not turn around to see if he is still there. Is that all he has left? The hope that Anakin will kill him just so that he knows that he was not his soulmate? It does not matter, and deep inside his heart, he knows it. Even if Anakin finds him here, kills him and leaves his body for the animals of the desert night to find, one truth does not eradicate another.</p>
<p>Anakin’s name on his wrist can be his death sentence, could always have been his death sentence, but he has always been his soulmate, too.</p>
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